Organizers of the Living Local Expo announce that Albe Zakes, the global vice president of TerraCycle, is one of the featured speakers at the sixth annual Expo, which will be held from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 23 in the Commons at Lawrence High School, located at 2525 Princeton Pike. Zakes will talk at 12:30 p.m. about how TerraCycle is able to collect non-recyclable garbage from consumer packaging and "upcycle" it into new products. TerraCycle currently partners with a number of brands to do this, including P&G, Capri-Sun, Target, and Frito-Lay.

What are the current issues in your region is facing and why is it an issue (regarding waste)? In this day and age, most are familiar with the effects of non-sustainable consumer behavior and aware of the growing importance of resource conservation. Still when budgets tighten, consumers turn away from eco-friendly products and towards more tradition – affordable – options. In 2008, the average American Consumer produced 4.5 pounds and only 1.1 pounds of that was recycled – and this was before the worse of global economic downturn. That same year, Clorox debuted Green Works, its sustainable line of cleaning products, and sales reach as high as 100 million dollars. Since then, sales dropped to about $60 million dollars by 2012 indicating that less consumers are willing to pay a premium for socially responsible items.

Through a program called TerraCycle, fourth grade student Julia Kourtney spearheaded an effort that earned her school hundreds of dollars. By Lauren Evans | Email the author | 12:30pm TerraCycle uses discarded packaging materials to make items such as tote bags and pencil cases. TerraCycle uses discarded packaging materials to make items such as tote bags and pencil cases. Like many of her classmates, Julia Kourtney, a fourth grader at P.S. 94, was already an avid recycler. But when she discovered there was money to made from her empty Capri Sun juice pouches, she started collecting those, too. Linda Kourtney, Julia's mother, said her daughter noticed the logo for TerraCycle, an organization that collects everything from chip bags to old cell phones, emblazoned on her lunchtime juice pouches, and became intrigued by the company's offer of two cents for every emptied pouch that gets mailed in. "She kept bringing the pouches home saying 'Mom, they're two cents!'" Kourtney said. "We asked the principal if we could do this sort of thing, and she said 'sure.'" Linda and her daughter placed cardboard boxes around the school grounds, in which students tossed their empty Capri Sun pouches. The younger Kourtney routinely empties the pouches from the boxes and sends them back to TerraCycle. Last year, Kourtney's efforts earned the school a whopping $660, much of which will be donated to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The rest will go back to P.S. 94, to be divided between funding for the school's science department and a party for the students involved in the recycling program. Once the pouches reach the TerraCycle plant, they are either upcycled—meaning they're converted into products like tote bags or backpacks—or recycled into construction materials like composite lumber or flooring, said TerraCycle's public relations intern David Smith. According to TerraCycle's website, the organization has collected 95,095,977 pouches through the program. But to the students at P.S. 94, though, there's nothing remarkable or radical about their efforts. "The kids are just really interested," Kourtney said. "They recycle in the school anyway. It was really normal for them to just put the pouches in a separate bin.”

Upcycling is, “simply put - using those items that cannot be recycled and remaking them into reusable items,” says DiColandrea. He uses energy bar wrappers as an example of how materials can be reused when they can’t be recycled. “Its [energy bars] packaging remains very high as a waste, and recycling the packaging is not easy for some local recycling centers to do. Reusing the packaging to create another product is a simple and low-cost answer,” he added. Green Starkville has created a team for Terracycle, a company which collects materials that can be reused to manufacture new items – upcycling. For each item received, Terracycle will give $0.02 to Green Starkville, and Terracycle turns the materials into everything from clipboards, bags, and toys to fences.